My Favourites of 2022

To start with, I want to celebrate my own personal growth over the last few years that I am calling this a list of favourites rather than a “best of”. I now realise that the word “best” is not just subjective but also is exclusionary rather than celebratory. So here’s to the food and drink and movies and music and books that brought me great joy this year… 

The meal that really stayed with me: My first omakase with Shubham Thakur at Megu in March this year. I said in March that it was the best meal I will eat all year. And although La Colombe in Cape Town was probably as good, the sheer originality and chutzpah of Shubham’s meal made it a bit more special. 

My favourite cinematic experience: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. It’s very rare that a movie this exhilaratingly creative, genre defying and rule breaking also has a such a strong emotional core. But this film has it all. It will go down as an all time masterpiece. 

My earworm: All Too Well (10 minute Version). Taylor Swift’s evolution continues to blow my mind. She’s taken a successful hit from her break-up confessional days and scoured the world. This is extraordinarily raw, intimate and vulnerable songwriting, but with imagery that is cinematic and poetic, a throbbing beat and melody and signing that just feels like every inflection and turn of phrase is note perfect. I must have heard it at least fifty times or more. 

The book I’ll never forget: Tomb of Sand by Gitanjali Shree (translated by Daisy Rockwell). I wish I knew enough Hindi to read it in the original but this I read this soon after I read the Books of Jacob and I couldn’t help but feel that Tomb of Sand should win its author the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s inventiveness with language, narrative and structure is extraordinary in itself. But what makes the book so unforgettable is it’s emotional power, as you realise that this is something far bigger and deeper and moving than a family drama. Actually I just realised I don’t have the ability to describe this book without really trite superlatives. All I can say is read it. This is one of the greatest books you will ever read. 

Two (or maybe three) other books that deserve a mention: The Friend by Sigrid Nunez was a deeply affecting story about love and loss and the process of grieving. The Porpoise by Mark Haddon was almost every bit as good as Curious Incident. Both these books moved me to tears of wonder and tears of heartbreak. I also don’t know if I read Station Eleven last year or this but what a wonderful, prescient elegiac novel about what humanity means in a post pandemic world. 

The new restaurant that I can’t recommend enough: OMO. Yes I think a vegetarian cafe in a mall in Gurgaon is the single best new restaurant I’ve been to all year. That’s how brilliant Vanshika Bhatia is. 

The drink that blew my mind: The Bastenga Negroni by Louness Ducos at Bomras, Goa. Still can’t get over the stinky ingredient that people from mainstream India looked down upon in my youth ended up giving rise to a cocktail that seemed to capture the spirit of the North East.

My binge watch TV Show: The Bear. I’m not from the food business but watching this felt like a visceral experience, from Bordouin to every chef friend I’ve ever read or heard from in vivid colour. I also really enjoyed We Own This City… it’s not The Wire but it’s a worthy follow up.